Just been doing some simpler renders trying out different things the past few nights. Never built out any neon and wanted to try out some things with the new volume mesher. All built using C4d and redshift.
I want to be an enthusiast.
And even if I’d like to I don’t think I can hand someone a resume with the title “enthusiast” as the only skills and experience.
Awesome blog post by Tim Pigott over at SuckLuck. Go check out this words and photos now you old fools.
Hmm, noticing a trend here....
“About six years ago, when I told people I was writing a novel about a group of activists destroying the internet, they would always ask me two questions. The first was always “why?” Tellingly, that’s not a question I get asked anymore. More often than not I’m met with a “nice,” a “right on,” or just a knowing, appreciative nod.
Amen.
““I absolutely detest modern ‘social media’ — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It’s a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior,” ”
Salvaged Beseler 23IIc enlarger!
My good friend Jeremy found this sitting on the side of the road and since it had a lens I was interested in seeing it. He was kind enough to pick it up, sit on it for probably a month and brought it over tonight. Electronics still work and has BOTH lenses which is unheard of, they are a bit mangey though. The gearing is shot to hell without a hope. I think I may make a wall sconce out of it in a way that if I ever got the notion I could use it in a darkroom. The video is shot through the massive focusing lens. I have a crazy notion to make a rig to mount that to a camera……
Your job for the rest of your life is to always be learning
Some great stuff here in this discussion. Covers, burn out, mental burn out, rates, being a human being and all sorts of goodness. Give it a listen.
Love, Death and Robots
Holy crap, started watching this last night and it’s freaking amazing. The CG is so next level.
Post FX is Redshift, wheee!
Whooo hoo! Post FX are now in Redshift and works without any tinkering in Houdini.
Release
Took some time to work on a animation of the Raven skull. This is the first time I have animated anything besides a simulation in Houdini and key framing is much easier than in C4d for me. Need to practice camera moves and learn more about time ramping. Would like this to be way more slow motion but not sure how to go about that yet.
Quick Coffee Time Study
Just trying to spend more time with Houdini and Redshift this morning doing a quick study while having my morning coffee. Seeing what I can make in a limited time and just getting in the habit of it. Not anything fancy, just learning but I did come up with a nice little jack to object merge the particles out of the sim so I could texture and size independently.
Smoke Study
Revisiting a project I made when I was demoing Redshift way back in November. Redoing the lights and materials. Hopefully I’ll have the animation soon, the render keeps crashing on me at random spots.
The Beginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting
I have been doing this two days a week since the end of last summer and it’s pretty interesting what it does.
“I have been intermittent fasting for over one year.
I skip breakfast each day and eat two meals, the first around 1pm and the second around 8pm. Then, I fast for 16 hours until I start eating again the next day at 1pm.
Surprisingly, since I've started intermittent fasting I've increased muscle mass (up 10 pounds from 205 to 215), decreased body fat (down 3% from 14% to 11%), increased explosiveness (set a personal best with a clean and jerk of 253 pounds a few months back), and decreased the amount of time I've spent training (down from 7.5 hours per week to 2.5 hours per week).
In other words, I'm stronger, leaner, and more explosive even though I go to the gym less and eat less.
You may be wondering…”
Houdini PopNets and passing attributes
Trying to work more in Houdini but it is such a rabbit hole. It’s difficult for me to just make something quick in there without wanting to add more and more stuff into the scene. I have like three things I am trying to finish up between work, music and the difficulty of it I am not getting to them. I almost wanna go back to “dailies” and just set a timer for 30 minutes. Wherever I am at 30 minutes, hit render and just be done so I did something at least. Anyways, here are somethings I managed to get out today after playing with pop networks a bit more. Really fun once you get it working.
Sharenting and growing up in the Internet Age.
One of the things that tends to come out when hanging out with musicians my age and older is that kids, be it their kids or young people in general, just don’t seem like they “party” like we did. I like to point out that we did not grow up with everyone around you having a camera and not only that, but they can post anything for the entire world to see and it will never be deleted. Can not be deleted. For bonus points, lets also put your name on it, maybe your address and what kind of soap you like. Looks like you were looking up some stuff on google, lets just tuck that away in here as well. Yiiiiiiiiiiikes. I think we have yet to discover a new kind of anxiety about “Internet Permanence”. People who live in constant fear of doing something stupid once and it being frozen for all to see forever.
Anyways, great article on the Atlantic kinda about the same thing. But it’s kids finding all the stuff their parents have posted online about them growing up and they get kinda freaked out.
“But it’s not just overzealous mommy bloggers who construct a child’s online identity; plenty of average parents do the same. There’s even a portmanteau for it: sharenting. Almost a quarter of children begin their digital lives when parents upload their prenatal sonogram scans to the internet, according to a study conducted by the internet-security firm AVG. The study also found that 92 percent of toddlers under the age of 2 already have their own unique digital identity. “Parents now shape their children’s digital identity long before these young people open their first email. The disclosures parents make online are sure to follow their children into adulthood,” declares a report by the University of Florida Levin College of Law. “
"Once in a Lifetime"
Great essay by Polyphonic on how the Talking Heads wrote “Once in a lifetime.” Such a great song…
Creating a Snowy Forest in UE4- Breakdown.
Really interesting break down by Leah Augustine on how she created this landscape in UE4. A lot of interesting solutions in here.
“When creating the snow textures in Substance Designer, I also created a detail normal of simple noise that I used in conjunction with the base normal. I found that when you use subsurface you tend to visually lose normal information, flattening out your material. Since I knew I wanted close up shots, I wanted to exaggerate the normals a bit more to counteract this.
I personally think that a detail normal and subsurface scattering is what helped achieve more realistic snow for this project. Subsurface, in my opinion, really brought it all together. It helps give the snow better highlights around the edges and creates the appearance of light shining through it. Subsurface can be costly, but it does make a difference .“
I tried making some snow in Octane and C4d and failed tragically. Will have to landscapes another shot at some point.
Behance.... huh, look at that....
Have not loaded up my Behance page in some time. Seems like my stats have gone a little bit nutty. Hello all you Behance peoples!
I need to do a round of portfolio updates soon I guess. It’s always a major pain in the ass to pull files and make before and afters…. wah, wah, wah!
Animated Last Post
Wanted to play with animating the last project I posted. It’s my first go at actually getting into a keyframed animation in Houdini. Everything else I have done has just been a sim. Actually getting into the POP network and keyframing it to behave how I was wanted was nice. Overall, Keyframing in Houdini seems pretty easy. No need for the Dope Sheet like in C4d to move keyframes.
Attributes / POPs from Images
Little daily render based off of a Nine Between tutorial, “Houdini Tutorial - Nodes Part 1: Attribute Nodes”. Rendered in RedShift. Might try to run a animation of it later. I can not recommend delving in Attributes and VEX sooner than later. This set up is shockingly simple.
Red Shift Layered Materials in Houdini
Just wanted to work on a quick daily messing around with layered materials in RedShift Houdini.
Did a bit of scatter of smaller spheres as well which I need to look into how to UV. Not too sure on how to use Particles in Redshift yet.